[L0rdGwyn]

Frankly, these “twin ring” mats were not primarily chosen for sound quality reasons, but to allow the easy removal of 7” singles and 10” LPs…

Gotcha, I'll look at replacing it at some point!

 

[Paladin79]

Theyre ok, better than average but not God tier. I'm on the lookout for some ST types but they seem scarce, so these will suffice in the interim. theyre worth having but dont expect to have your world rocked like the GEC or NU did to you.

EDIT: oh wait RCA metal? No clue, I dont have a pair. Sorry I thought you were asking about the Tung Sols.
I did just pickup a pair of GE cans on the cheap due to the + comments in the 6J5 spreadshhet, but havent tried them yet.

Having done a comparison of most any 6sn7 and equivalent known to man there are a few types of Sylvania ST 6j5's I really like.

Wartime versions were the VT-192, Loktal can be quite good but I have not searched for them in a couple years so I do not know availability.


Others by Sylvania I really like have three hole black plates like the Bad Boys so I dubbed them naughty girls. They are in the Vali 2 in the last photo. There were also some grey plates and some with two holes and bottom getters as best I recall.

The NU's did not test very well and we tried a couple NOS pairs, GEC did pretty well. None of them did well enough to finish in the top 52 tubes though in our blind testing unfortunately. We should done a different category for some of the 6j5's perhaps. GEC's finished in the top 100 so that is doing pretty well in a 1500 tube type comparison.

 

[CJG888]

Gotcha, I'll look at replacing it at some point!

The easiest thing to do might be to do what Linn did to the TD150: replace the rubber mat with a felt one. This will improve contact between LP and platter, but I don’t know how this solution hopes to control platter resonances. Maybe the „liveliness“ and „PRaT“ of the early LP12 was just due to a ringing platter!

 

[CJG888]

Running slightly too fast might help, too…

OK, I’m just being cynical now!

 

[jgwtriode]

I remember my Linn Turntable setup from years ago, a bit of nostalgia!

Happy listening,

jgwtriode

 

[CJG888]

I‘m sure a properly-sorted TD125 with a good electronic speed controller will whip the current LP12‘s a$$. Maybe a head-to-head can be arranged…

 

[Paladin79]

The last turntable I rebuilt was a Marantz 6300. I needed to keep it as stock as possible for a listening session friends and I put together.

 

[Xcalibur255]

Theyre ok, better than average but not God tier. I'm on the lookout for some ST types but they seem scarce, so these will suffice in the interim. theyre worth having but dont expect to have your world rocked like the GEC or NU did to you.

EDIT: oh wait RCA metal? No clue, I dont have a pair. Sorry I thought you were asking about the Tung Sols.
I did just pickup a pair of GE cans on the cheap due to the + comments in the 6J5 spreadshhet, but havent tried them yet.

The ST glass 6J5 are kind of a double-edged sword in general. My opinion based on my entire collection thus far: the ST glass tubes seem to generally have an advantage in resolution and overall depth of presentation, but they are also tend to be more problematic tubes with higher rates of noise and microphony issues. So with pleasure comes pain. I have yet to hear a 6J5GT be noisy, and some of them like the Raytheon WGT have really great build quality in general.

 

[jgwtriode]

Kind of overwhelming but the latest all out Linn LP 12 is the Klimax at 20,000 Euros. They just reviewed it in Stereophile. Wow!

jgwtriode

 

[Monsterzero]

The ST glass 6J5 are kind of a double-edged sword in general. My opinion based on my entire collection thus far: the ST glass tubes seem to generally have an advantage in resolution and overall depth of presentation, but they are also tend to be more problematic tubes with higher rates of noise and microphony issues. So with pleasure comes pain. I have yet to hear a 6J5GT be noisy, and some of them like the Raytheon WGT have really great build quality in general.

Keenan's amp is really quiet, like really quiet. Tubes that were so noisy that they were unusable in my GOTL are silent on the Airmid. Oddly the noisiest tube on the Airmid is one of the Tung Sol black cans I used last night. That black background was one of the many reasons I decided to sell my Glenn and pick up the Airmid.

The only ST types I have are the GEC l63 smoked glass- dead silent and a pair of Zenith 6C5s. Those have a very, very faint hum in one of them.

 

[Paladin79]

Keenan's amp is really quiet, like really quiet. Tubes that were so noisy that they were unusable in my GOTL are silent on the Airmid. Oddly the noisiest tube on the Airmid is one of the Tung Sol black cans I used last night. That black background was one of the many reasons I decided to sell my Glenn and pick up the Airmid.

The only ST types I have are the GEC l63 smoked glass- dead silent and a pair of Zenith 6C5s. Those have a very, very faint hum in one of them.

I stopped designing amps or I would have let you hear one of mine. I may build one more for myself that is prettier than the one I donated to @bcowen but that will be it for 6sn7's and the 6080 family. Tubes of choice for me were Tung Sol 5998's and some exceedingly rare Melz 6n8s from the early fifties. I own plenty of headphones and have heard most of the top of the line units made but I really prefer Focal Utopias. I do not do closed headphones anymore, they are just not for me. My local audiophile group may do a study of power tubes down the road as well as headphone amps. Our tests groups can be fifty people or more using music that was recorded to show off 25 audio criteria. A tube might do well in several areas but not score well enough overall to be considered toward the top. It can be a little clinical but in the end it has to do with what people hear and notice in the blind studies. In a sense applying objective thinking to a subjective subject.

Recently we did a small and fun study of boutique fuses and fortunately four test amps I made were still very close to each other in specs using our baseline of Tung Sol 5998 tubes as well as four 6sn7's I best not talk about. Naturally I have done plenty of studies with different wire and cables, one young woman could consistently pick out types of wire in a blind study. Most are fortunate to tell copper wire from solid silver.

 

[JazzVinyl]

I think that the consensus is that most metal 6J5 were made by RCA. This tube and the metal 6N7 are very underrated tubes.

Agree with this. The metal envelope tubes, never got their justice, probably because of "no glow". They take a while to build up a full head of steam. Much longer than their glass envelope brethren. Leave them in for an hour, then see what you think.

Don't forget the Mullard FDD20 - a beautiful "blue hue" glass envelope 12v version of the 6N7 family of tubes, in the weird European side contact mount.
These were heavenly in FA's Elise, not so impressive in the GOTL.

But some amps really go to town, like a pro, with them.

I have mine running today, in a Little Dot MK9 (another amp that is absolutely silent when no audio input is present).
My example was made in Italy during early years of WWII when they were still part of the military alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan,

Count the MK9 as another amp that likes the FDD20.

 

[Monsterzero]

I best not talk about. Naturally I have done plenty of studies with different wire and cables, one young woman could consistently pick out types of wire in a blind study. Most are fortunate to tell copper wire from solid silver.

I did a cable shootout a couple years ago...6 pairs of RCAs, 4 different USB cables and some high end power cables vs. not so high end. I did a video on my Youtube channel ( link in signature) revealing my findings. To say that I was a bit surprised, especially with the USB section, is an understatement.

I have not played around with various fuses yet, but I'd like to when funds permit.

I do understand your hesitancy to discuss these topics in the forums though.

 

[Xcalibur255]

Keenan's amp is really quiet, like really quiet. Tubes that were so noisy that they were unusable in my GOTL are silent on the Airmid. Oddly the noisiest tube on the Airmid is one of the Tung Sol black cans I used last night. That black background was one of the many reasons I decided to sell my Glenn and pick up the Airmid.

The only ST types I have are the GEC l63 smoked glass- dead silent and a pair of Zenith 6C5s. Those have a very, very faint hum in one of them.

Different operating points and active loading might explain the difference too. It's fairly common for a tube to be noisy in one amp and quiet in another, and I've also found specific pairings of driver and output tubes that seem to create noise issues but each tube will independently be noise free when operated with different tube pairings.

Case in point some NU 6J5G I just bought are humming in my GOTL, but I think there's a decent chance they will be quiet in the 1101 Audio KT150 when I try them there. At least I hope so because that's the amp I actually bought them for. I may try a different power tube combo with them before taking them out of the GOTL too.

Glenn's amps tend to be a good worst-case scenario sanity check for noisy tubes because he often used aggressive operating points for his amps that would stress them a bit. If a tube is quiet in the GOTL I fully expect it to be quiet in any other amp it could be inserted into, that's been my experience over the past 11 years of owning this amp.

 

[Paladin79]

I did a cable shootout a couple years ago...6 pairs of RCAs, 4 different USB cables and some high end power cables vs. not so high end. I did a video on my Youtube channel ( link in signature) revealing my findings. To say that I was a bit surprised, especially with the USB section, is an understatement.

I have not played around with various fuses yet, but I'd like to when funds permit.

I do understand your hesitancy to discuss these topics in the forums though.

I watched a bit of your video on cables. I build all of my own including USB with some incredible Belden cable. About the only thing I have not worked with, designed or modified has been DAC's but my preferences were very close to my group's likes except I reversed the order of two DACS compared to what was chosen by the majority. One young lady matched the groups selection top to bottom on all 20 DACS. Some of our results are supposed to be published so I try not to go into too many specifics.

The fuse test was not real serious but a few friends went along with it.